I had a dream last night. I was driving through a parking lot in a large SUV, and I saw some pools of water and alligators in the parking lot. I knew that if I ran over them, they’d end up under my feet inside the SUV. I could avoid the jaws and head though, and be OK. So I did. I ran over part of an alligator, carefully avoiding the head. The part of the gator that I ran over appeared under my feet. I didn’t worry about it until I looked down, between my legs and saw something down there moving. When I pulled my legs up, there was part of a snake, the head and a couple feet of the body attached, and it was fully alive and trying to bite me. I kept my legs up, and it bit my pants a couple of times, but didn’t get me.

Recently in church we’ve been talking about margin – and how close do we come to something, do we leave a safe margin? This is somehow a reflection of that, I think. I could have stayed away from the gators, and instead, I tried to get close, and it bit me. The difficult thing is trying to figure out *what* I’m getting to close to. What do I need to widen the margin on?